Brainstorming: Winning with Grouphug

[Dunadain]

There is currently a thread @DirkGently started that originally started by talking about Humble Defector. @yeti1069 mentioned that many commander players don't understand the concept of card advantage, and run effects like Howling Mine because of it.

I snarkily pointed out that Howling Mine can work as card advantage in certain situations. Namely, when one player is the archenemy. When one player is significantly ahead at the table, a Howling Mine is feeding him an extra card per turn, but it is feeding his enemies, who are presumably united in stopping him, 3 cards a turn. Though I admitted I wasn't sure there was a deck out there that should be running howling mine.

Then, @Toshi and @materpillar pointed out two decks that might run Howling Mine: The Council of Four and Yurlok of Scorch Thrash.

Here's the thread if anyone missed it.

The Council of Four does make Howling Mine a reasonable card, but not so much because it beats down on the archenemy, but because it breaks parity on Howling Mine, turning it into actual card advantage. In a similar vein 4-5 years ago, I made a Kami of the Crescent Moon deck inspired by old Howling Mine lists. I stuffed every single, even remotely playable, extra turn spell into that deck, and it was actually kind of a monster.

@materpillar's Yurlok of Scorch Thrash deck is a little bit closer, the idea is to feed everyone cards so that everyone has a bunch of resources, and no one can run away with the game, until it casts Insurrection and "takes back" all the cards it has been giving away. The idea here seems closer to an actual group hug list, but it's also mostly a combo deck. It reminds me of Phelddagrif + Ezuri's Predation lists.

So can we make a deck that wins with group hug? And I mean with group hug, not in spite of group hug.

As I said before, group hug effects theoretically harm whichever player is the furthest ahead. In practice, they often help combo decks and aggro decks more than other decks. I think group hug effects benefit combo decks more than other decks because when you assemble your combo, you win, regardless of how many resources your opponents have. Meanwhile, I think they disproportionately help aggro decks because aggro decks eschew long-term value for immediate impact on the board/opponent's life total. If you give an aggro deck additional value engines, free of charge, then they kind of get the best of both worlds.

So, if we are going to have a successful grouphug decklist, we need three things:

1) Inevitability: If group hug effects drag the table towards equilibrium, then the deck better be favored while the table is at equilibrium.

2) Combo Hate: If group hug effects benefit combo decks, then the deck needs to have alternative ways to keep combo decks down.

3) Aggro Hate: If group hug effects benefit aggro decks, then the deck needs to effectively defend against aggression.


So, I'm pretty sure we're looking at a control list (wow, what a surprise, @Dunadain thinks he should make a control deck), filled with interaction, boardwipes (or some other aggro hate), and some group hug effects.

Who should the commander be though? My immediate instinct was Kwain, Itinerant Meddler. He's a Howling Mine in the command zone, with good colors, and you don't have to activate his ability when the table is already at an equilibrium. The extra lifegain is mostly irrelevant, but does tie into the general theme of wanting to keep the entire table alive. With Kwain, we could probably put 0 other grouphug effects in the deck and still do alright.

On the other hand, we don't need the grouphug to be in the CZ, another option I'm considering is Tasigur, the Golden Fang. While he isn't grouphug in the slightest, his ability does also tend to bring the table to an equilibrium in his own way, when one player is ahead, your other opponents are happy to give you what you need to drag said problem player down, when no one is ahead, his ability becomes significantly weaker.

There's plenty of other commander options as well though, with and without group hug abilities. I think the only real requirement is we need Blue so that we have counterspells for combos and Torment of Hailfires.

Then we need to consider win conditions. It needs to be resilient, it needs to be inevitable, and it needs to win the game on the spot. Unlike Dirk's political deck, this deck can't wait for your opponents to all take each other out, then deliver the coupe de grace on the last player, as our own group hug effects will likely be turned towards ourselves once one or two players die.

I think the obvious answer is Nexus of Fate. It's ridiculously difficult to interact with as it just goes back in the deck whenever it gets countered, it's inevitable as your library only gets smaller, and it's an infinite combo so kills the entire table at once. Only probably is that it is REALLY slow, so might need to see how we can speed it up some more.

Other options might be:

Field of the Dead: Very resilient and very inevitable, but difficult to kill the entire table at once.

Psychic Corrosion and co.: No so resilient, inevitable, might kill some players slightly before others, and can back-fire in the face of GY-based decks.

Probably some others, idk

[yeti1069]

I've played against a group hug deck that won via Forced Fruition--by the time the other 2 players were wising up to the dangers of being forced to draw so many cards via Howling Mine effects early in the game, the GH player had a huge defensive advantage, and then FF made it impossible to interact.

The other GH deck that I've lost to on a few occasions was pre-banning of Hullbreacher--they devoted a few tutors to finding it, and included some wheels, so it hugged until it found HB, then denied cards to everyone until they found a win. Perfectly illustrated why HB needed to be banned.

[materpillar]

@materpillar's Yurlok of Scorch Thrash deck is a little bit closer, the idea is to feed everyone cards so that everyone has a bunch of resources, and no one can run away with the game, until it casts Insurrection and "takes back" all the cards it has been giving away. The idea here seems closer to an actual group hug list, but it's also mostly a combo deck. It reminds me of Phelddagrif + Ezuri's Predation lists.

As a side note: Yurlok of Scorch Thrash is only the commander because I like his foil, his effect is vaguely group hug, but mostly because I like killing people after a game of hugging and saying "The gifts of jund always come with a price"

He's has basically no synergy with group hug cards on his own at all. Also, while I say "group hug" it's kinda group hug / group slug / control in disguise.

So can we make a deck that wins with group hug? And I mean with group hug, not in spite of group hug.

This is an unclear goal. "Group Hug" (as I define it) means most of your decks actions are giving resources to other players. This by definition can't really win? You can't really kill people by giving them mana (Yurlok of Scorch Thrash aside). You can't really kill people with Howling Mine unless you're a turbo fog or mill deck but then you're turbo fog or mill. You can't really kill people by giving them tokens unless you build some combo (aka Insurrection).

I view group hug as more of what are you doing in the midgame not how are you navigating the late game (unless it's suicide yourself winconditonless group hug). The only way to win with a group hug card that I can think of off hand is Forced Fruition and I consider that more of a mill wincon than group hug.

[Dunadain]

I've played against a group hug deck that won via Forced Fruition--by the time the other 2 players were wising up to the dangers of being forced to draw so many cards via Howling Mine effects early in the game, the GH player had a huge defensive advantage, and then FF made it impossible to interact.

The other GH deck that I've lost to on a few occasions was pre-banning of Hullbreacher--they devoted a few tutors to finding it, and included some wheels, so it hugged until it found HB, then denied cards to everyone until they found a win. Perfectly illustrated why HB needed to be banned.

That's kind of the idea, but I'm hoping the deception is a little bit more subtle.

@materpillar's Yurlok of Scorch Thrash deck is a little bit closer, the idea is to feed everyone cards so that everyone has a bunch of resources, and no one can run away with the game, until it casts Insurrection and "takes back" all the cards it has been giving away. The idea here seems closer to an actual group hug list, but it's also mostly a combo deck. It reminds me of Phelddagrif + Ezuri's Predation lists.

As a side note: Yurlok of Scorch Thrash is only the commander because I like his foil, his effect is vaguely group hug, but mostly because I like killing people after a game of hugging and saying "The gifts of jund always come with a price"

He's has basically no synergy with group hug cards on his own at all. Also, while I say "group hug" it's kinda group hug / group slug / control in disguise.

So can we make a deck that wins with group hug? And I mean with group hug, not in spite of group hug.

This is an unclear goal. "Group Hug" (as I define it) means most of your decks actions are giving resources to other players. This by definition can't really win? You can't really kill people by giving them mana (Yurlok of Scorch Thrash aside). You can't really kill people with Howling Mine unless you're a turbo fog or mill deck but then you're turbo fog or mill. You can't really kill people by giving them tokens unless you build some combo (aka Insurrection).

I view group hug as more of what are you doing in the midgame not how are you navigating the late game (unless it's suicide yourself winconditonless group hug). The only way to win with a group hug card that I can think of off hand is Forced Fruition and I consider that more of a mill wincon than group hug.

I just mean that the group hug effects need to improve your chances of winning the game, rather than reducing your odds, which most gh decks seem to do. I don't actually care what actually finishes of my opponent.

You can't actually kill your opponent with Counterspell, but you can absolutely win a game with Counterspells. That's the idea here.

[yeti1069]

I view group hug as more of what are you doing in the midgame not how are you navigating the late game (unless it's suicide yourself winconditonless group hug). The only way to win with a group hug card that I can think of off hand is Forced Fruition and I consider that more of a mill wincon than group hug.

I think group hug being defined as most of your actions granting your opponents resources is accurate/agreed upon. Saying that FF isn't group hug because it's mill both ignores what the card does, and how you get there. Group hug into Insurrection, or group hug with a draw/mana doubler or Smothering Tithe to break parity on the extra resources is in the same spirit, I think. You need some way of "turning the corner" to move toward winning, and I'm not sure that what that happens to be negates the thrust and theme of the deck. If you're drawing to a combo win, but look like group hug along the way, you're a group hug deck. Most decks don't go out of their way to provide resources to their opponents--that's the definitive feature of group hug.

The FF win came from a Xyris, the Writhing Storm deck that, admittedly, probably could have just killed the table turns earlier with their army of snakes, though their army also ensured no one was swinging at them.

[materpillar]

I think group hug being defined as most of your actions granting your opponents resources is accurate/agreed upon. Saying that FF isn't group hug because it's mill both ignores what the card does, and how you get there.

Sure, it isn't a mill card per say it just feels like a mill card to me. In practice FF is very very close to each opponent mills 7 every time they cast a spell with cards in their hand gaining Regrowth for 0.

Group hug into Insurrection, or group hug with a draw/mana doubler or Smothering Tithe to break parity on the extra resources is in the same spirit, I think. You need some way of "turning the corner" to move toward winning, and I'm not sure that what that happens to be negates the thrust and theme of the deck. If you're drawing to a combo win, but look like group hug along the way, you're a group hug deck. Most decks don't go out of their way to provide resources to their opponents--that's the definitive feature of group hug.

The FF win came from a Xyris, the Writhing Storm deck that, admittedly, probably could have just killed the table turns earlier with their army of snakes, though their army also ensured no one was swinging at them.

Xyris, the Writhing Storm is actually a pretty baller group hug commander.

I just mean that the group hug effects need to improve your chances of winning the game, rather than reducing your odds, which most gh decks seem to do. I don't actually care what actually finishes of my opponent.

You can't actually kill your opponent with Counterspell, but you can absolutely win a game with Counterspells. That's the idea here.

Oh. Well this is a weird thread for me since I already built this deck with my Yurlok of Scorch Thrash deck. For that deck, I started with my commander and my winconditions and built backwards from there. Depends on your powerlevel desires and whatnot a lot too.

[Sinis]

Howling Mine gets particular ire because card draw in the hands of your opponent is one of the least controllable things you can gift them. In Phelddagrif, if you gift someone a pile of hippos, you might also play Propaganda and Ghostly Prison. There's very little you can do about your opponents draws.

I think group hug is also always a suspicious proposition for me: I've played against group hug many times, and every single time, they're biding their time to play something like Approach of the Second Sun supported by the resources they've been hoarding as the rest of us squabbled amongst ourselves. The moment someone tables Kwain or Howling Mine, absent someone else approaching a victory condition, I attack the group hug player.

[onering]

I have a Grixis group hug deck that does well (Vial Smasher and Ludevic), and I've seen the 4 color group hug guy do well.

Group hug that actually tries to win does so a couple ways.

First, it doesn't hand out all kinds of resources, it picks one or two kinds of resources to hand out and avoids handing out mana except in small amounts and only when breaking parity. My preference is handing out creature tokens because those can be used against your other opponents instead of you, but handing out cards works very well also. Without the extra mana, there's a limit on how many spells people can cast and it's easy to build your deck to break parity (and be prepared to take greater advantage of it).

Second, they don't skimp on interaction. You don't want to king make, so you need to be able to answer key threats if you help people get them out. You ideally want other players to answer each other's threats, but you NEED to be able to do so if nobody else does. You want to be able to maintain control of the situation while handing out your goodies.

Third, you need to be running threats of your own. I prefer things that take advantage of your opponents having more resources or which take advantage of the resources you're handing out. Steal effects, Insurrection, things that benefit from you drawing a lot of cards, or a commander that serves as a viable finisher (like Vial Smasher).

Lastly, you really want to be using group hug as a strategy to get your opponents to go after each other. I use Ludevic because you can cast him early and get people to attack each other for cards. The Monarch and Initiative are also great, you get hit once to lose it then let your opponents fight over it while you avoid retaking it (Marchesa 2.0 is a good commander for this). There's plenty of cards that get players to make the choice to attack each other, while you prepare to finish off the last man standing against you. In an established playgroup, people will figure this out, but I find they're much less likely to aggro you if your wincon is dealing damage, because if you use alt wincons or combos people will be wary of your ability to win without warning, while if you need to rely one bringing everyone to zero life the old fashioned way people assume they'll be able to see it coming.